How nutrition, sleep and stress sit alongside what we put on our skin.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what we put on our skin.

It comes with being a formulator. I look at fatty acids, lipids, how they behave together and what they can do once they reach the skin.

There is another side to this that I find just as interesting.

However carefully I formulate a balm, the skin still has to do most of the work itself.

It has to make new cells. Produce lipids. Build proteins. Organise all of those components into the remarkably complex structure we call the skin barrier.

To do that, it also needs materials from within.

The barrier reaches beyond the surface

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is often described as a wall.

The skin cells are the bricks. Lipids fill the spaces between them.

It is a useful picture, but the reality is much more interesting.

Those lipids are highly organised. Ceramides, cholesterol and fatty acids arrange themselves into layers around the cells. Together they help slow the movement of water out of the skin and make it harder for unwanted substances to move in.

The skin makes much of this itself. Some of the materials it needs ultimately have to come from what we eat. Read more about the skin barrier here

This is where fats become interesting

What you eat can influence the skin through the nutrients and fatty acids the body uses to support normal skin function.

Dietary fats are broken down, absorbed and metabolised before the skin ever sees them.

Some fatty acids are essential. Our bodies cannot make them, so they have to come from food.

Linoleic acid is one of them.

I find this one particularly interesting because it also has a very specific role in the skin barrier. It becomes part of specialised ceramides that are important to the organisation of the stratum corneum.

The important point is sufficiency rather than excess. The skin needs access to linoleic acid to build certain parts of its structure.

That distinction matters.

Nuts, seeds and many plant oils provide linoleic acid. Oily fish provides the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. Flax, chia and walnuts contain ALA, the plant form of omega-3, although we only convert a relatively small amount of it into EPA and DHA.

A varied diet makes more sense than reducing skin health to one “skin food”.

Protein belongs in the story too

This part tends to get less attention because fatty acids sound much more like skincare.

Skin needs amino acids too.

Keratin, collagen, enzymes and countless other proteins involved in normal skin function have to be made somewhere. The body builds them from amino acids, which ultimately come from the protein we eat.

The same principle applies here. Adequate protein provides the raw material the body uses for normal maintenance and renewal.

That is a recurring theme with skin. Enough matters more than excess.

And then there is sleep

I think we underestimate this one.

Skin remains active while we sleep. Barrier function and repair follow biological rhythms, and studies have found that sleep restriction can affect hydration, water loss and recovery of the barrier after it has been disturbed.

That may explain something most of us have seen in the mirror.

A few bad nights really can show on your skin.

Sleep and skincare simply do different jobs. Skincare works at the surface. Sleep supports processes that take place throughout the body.

Stress can show up there too

The skin is connected to the nervous, immune and hormonal systems, so psychological stress can influence how it behaves.

Research has found that psychological stress can slow barrier recovery.

When skin suddenly becomes tighter, drier or more reactive, I find it useful to look beyond the bathroom shelf.

The formula may be exactly the same while sleep, stress or daily life has changed.

How much does water really matter?

Hydration is another area where a sensible idea has somehow become a beauty treatment.

If you are dehydrated, your skin can be affected.

Adequate hydration matters. Beyond that point, research gives us little reason to expect that continually drinking more water will keep adding moisture to the skin.

Drink enough. Drink regularly.

Your skin barrier still has to do its own job.

And what about supplements?

There are plenty of nutrients involved in normal skin biology.

Vitamin C. Vitamin E. Zinc. Vitamin D. Essential fatty acids. Protein.

A genuine deficiency can absolutely affect the skin.

The useful goal is meeting nutritional needs. Once those needs are covered, the case for adding more becomes much weaker.

This is why I am wary of long lists of “beauty supplements”.

The skin needs nutrition.

Whether supplementation is useful depends on individual need.

So where does the balm come in?

This is the part I have spent rather a lot of time on.

The Six-Seed Balm approaches the same structure from the other direction.

From the outside.

I chose the six seed oils for the variety of their lipid composition and for how they work together in the formula.

Skin biology is more interconnected than assigning one oil to one neat little job.

I was looking for a broader lipid composition.

Jojoba. Abyssinian. Cacay. Tomato seed. Pomegranate. Rosehip CO₂.

They bring different fatty-acid profiles and different lipid components to the formula. Around them I built the rest of the balm with squalane, butters, waxes, lecithin and lipid-soluble actives.

Once applied, part of what the balm does is very straightforward.

It forms a fine lipid layer over the skin. That helps soften the surface and slow water loss.

That is only part of what happens.

Some applied lipids can partition into the outer layers of the stratum corneum and interact with the lipids already there.

That is one of the reasons the composition of the balm mattered so much to me.

The aim was to create a lipid environment that works with the outer barrier while the living skin underneath continues doing what only it can do.

Renewing. Organising. Building. 

Inside and out

I think this is a much more useful way to look at skincare.

What we put on the skin matters.

What the skin has available from within matters too.

Food, sleep and topical skincare all have different roles. Each reaches the skin in a different way.

The biology is more complex than replacing a missing ingredient one for one.

Both sides can influence the same structure.

From within, we give the skin the materials and conditions it needs to build.

From the outside, we can support the environment and lipid structure of the barrier it has already built.

That is what I mean when I talk about Skin Architecture.

Understanding how the skin is built, and working from there.

We are still in the final stretch before launch. Leave your email and we will tell you the moment the balm is ready, along with more on supporting the skin from the inside and outside. Acces to waitlist.